title: The role of native-language phonology in the auditory word identification and visual word recognition of Russian-English bilinguals.
abstract: Does native language phonology influence visual word processing in a second language? This question was investigated in two experiments with two groups of Russian-English bilinguals, differing in their English experience, and a monolingual English control group. Experiment 1 tested visual word recognition following semantic categorization of words containing four phonological vowel contrasts (/i/-/u/,/I/-/A/,/i/-/I/,/epsilon/-/ae/). Experiment 2 assessed auditory identification accuracy of words containing these four contrasts. Both bilingual groups demonstrated reduced accuracy in auditory identification of two English vowel contrasts absent in their native phonology (/i/-/I/,epsilon/-/ae/). For late- bilinguals, auditory identification difficulty was accompanied by poor visual word recognition for one difficult contrast (/i/-/I/). Bilinguals' visual word recognition moderately correlated with their auditory identification of difficult contrasts. These results indicate that native language phonology can play a role in visual processing of second language words. However, this effect may be considerably constrained by orthographic systems of specific languages.
authors.affiliation: Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, IL 60612, USA. valeriy_shafiro@rush.edu
authors.forename: Valeriy
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Shafiro
authors.forename: Anatoliy V
authors.initials: AV
authors.lastname: Kharkhurin
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007807:Language Tests; D008297:Male; D019303:Multilingualism; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010700:Phonetics; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D011932:Reading; D013060:Speech; D013067:Speech Perception; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014825:Vocabulary; D055815:Young Adult